All we can hope for this mess to clear out soon and Lawrence to get back as the director.

Akshay Kumar’s Laxmmi Bomb with its first ever poster has already lent itself into controversy as the director, Raghava Lawrence, left the project because of reasons that he stated were not one but multiple. Now we have the scoop and all that was happening behind the curtains which led the director to do so, and it has a Kiara Advani connection to it too.

In an exclusive conversation with Bollywood Hungama, Ragahava Lawrence’s friend revealed it all as he began with, “He felt disrespected with a lot of action and behaviour from the Bollywood team and that’s why he hit the roof. The first issue was about the female lead. Raghava wanted south actress Laxmi Rai, who acted in Muni 2 as she and Akshay would have made a fresh pair. The rights of Laxmmi Bomb are with Tusshar and Shabina but Shabina is literally calling the shots. Apparently, she told Raghava that the studios, Fox Star, wanted top actresses like Katrina Kaif and Deepika Padukone because of box-office business and Shabina was the only contact point between Lawrence, Akshay and the studio. The director didn’t have an issue with bigger names for the actresses as they would add to the project, but he had no clue who Shabina had approached or spoken to. Till the last minute it seemed Katrina or Deepika was on board till he heard that Kiara had been signed and by then, he was already exhausted as too many fights have been happening, so he said fine to Kiara.”

Furthermore, he also revealed that there were creative differences. “Raghava has great respect for Akshay sir but Lawrence is the captain of the ship and if somebody releases the poster, without his knowledge, it’s not done. He was in Chennai when somebody praised the Laxmmi Bomb poster and he didn’t even know that it had released. He was like had they even told me they liked this poster I would have tweeted about it. There were different posters but this one was just a trial thing and he didn’t want to show Akshay turning into a transgender as that is the secret or suspense of the film. It should have closer to the release and that’s why he was so upset. What do I have to hold on to the script right now? There were a million ways that I could have showed Akshay. I didn’t want to show this. That’s how many things had been finalised without informing him, but he still put up with it – till it became one continuous battle for him and ended with the poster. One cannot let go of one’s self-respect at one’s workplace. The poster was the breaking point for him as there were a series of things going wrong before that. A lot of things accumulated before he reached the point when he reacted this way and he has reacted in a respectable way by announcing it on Twitter. Nobody can react like that overnight and not a professional like Raghava.”